Health services

home and community care (HACC) services for people aged under 65 and under 50 for Aboriginal people

mental health community support services (MHCSS)

sexual health prevention services

Housing and community building services

department managed housing

homelessness assistance

long-term housing assistance

Youth services

refugee minor program

youth services

For NDIS providers: Victoria's quality and safeguards arrangements will remain during transition to full scheme roll-out in 2019. This means that NDIS providers are required to comply with the CIMS.

Applicable policies

CIMS is supported by a new policy:

Client incident management guide

Client incident management guide - out-of-home care addendum

Find out more about the CIMS

The CIMS webpage has more information about the CIMS, including the policy, link to the incident report webform and client incident register, fact sheets, implementation guidance, learning and development materials and IT requirements.

For assistance with the CIMS, refer to resources within the CIMS webpage or email CIMS@dhhs.vic.gov.au. Stakeholders using their own IT reporting system and submitting incidents via the application program interface should continue to speak with their IT vendor.

Funded organisations previously reported privacy incidents as category one critical incident reports. With the introduction of the Client Incident Management System (CIMS) a new eform based Privacy incident report form was developed to enable funded organisations to continue notifying the department about privacy incidents.

Privacy incidents must be reported within one business day. A privacy breach that impacts a client may need to be reported as a client incident under CIMS as well as through a privacy incident report.

Visit the Privacy page for more information, including a link to the Privacy incident report web form, fact sheets and guidelines.

What is happening?

The Victorian Government is strengthening the safeguards for people with a disability and implementing the recommendations of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Abuse in Disability Services (the Parliamentary Inquiry). The Parliamentary Inquiry was set up to investigate why abuse is not always reported in the disability sector and responded to, and how abuse can be prevented.

As part of its response to the Parliamentary Inquiry, the Victorian Government is increasing the independent oversight of the disability sector by expanding the Disability Services Commissioner's (the Commissioner) inquiries into client incident reports to include client deaths.

Victoria has also agreed to the Commonwealth Government's National Quality and Safeguards Framework for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which will establish the national safeguards under the NDIS. Until that framework is in place, the government will continue its work to implement the Parliamentary Inquiry's recommendations and ensure the highest standards of quality and support for people with a disability.

Expanded review of critical incidents

The department currently provides the Commissioner with all Category One incident reports of:

injury

sexual abuse

physical abuse

emotional/psychological abuse

emotional/psychological trauma

financial abuse

inappropriate physical treatment

sexual exploitation

poor quality of care

client deaths

Services in scope

The Commissioner's inquiries into assault, injury, poor quality of care and deaths apply to disability services provided by the department and disability service providers registered, funded or contracted under the Disability Act 2006 (the Act).

During the transition to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), this includes Victorian approved NDIS providers registered under the Act.

Further information

For further information about the Commissioner’s new functions and powers, see: